Talk:GSS coding system

Luton

Erm. Why exactly is Luton listed under Cambridgeshire? Lozleader 18:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I was aiming for Huntingdonshire and missed! There are also a bunch of obselete codes in the 56 and upwards range for the 1974-1996 welsh principal areas that I may add. Morwen - Talk 18:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Two-tier counties & districts

Would it be worth expanding:

01-07   obsolete, were Greater London & the metropolitan counties

For completeness (and also to assist with anyone researching how the coding system worked prior to the last lot of reorganisation) -- Ratarsed 13:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Super Output Areas

It is a good concept, but why this strange name of "Super Output Areas"? – Kaihsu (talk) 22:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The article confuses terms. There are lots of Output Areas in England, with, as they say, about 100 households in each. These are then combined to create Lower layer Super Output Areas (often referred to as LSOAs), and there are about 6 OAs in each LSOA. Then Middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) are created by combining about 4 LSOAs. So I guess 'super' basically means combined/bigger.

The later Super Output Section looks OK, but the first section has a one sentence paragraph which is incorrect (OAs don't = SOAs, plus there are 32,482 LSOAs, and and a lot more OAs (I'm not sure how many)) and need changing to reflect this. – C.Heward (talk • contribs) 16:36, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Update with new-style codes

I have created a sortable Wikitable with the new versions of ONS codes (except N. Ireland where the system has not been adopted). To the extent that the ONS codes are used within Wikipedia templates etc, I expect this will continue to be based on the 'old' codes as they are more user friendly, but time will tell. I intend to improve the table when I have some more time, including changing the order of the rows. Any comments welcome. Sussexonian (talk) 11:03, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Query

In the table under "List of current codes" there is a notes column with "NB 1" and "NB 2" but there is no note to indicate what these mean. Keith D (talk) 23:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Counties

The "County" column in the list of "List of current codes" table is wrong. Either it should use old traditional counties, or it should use present-day administrative counties. But it is a mix of both. Middlesbrough is in its old traditional county of North Yorkshire, even though it hasn't been part of North Yorkshire County Council since the 1970s. Conversely, Liverpool is in the county of Merseyside, which was only created in the 1970s. I'm going to change the column to show present-day administrative counties, which means all Unitary Authorities will not have a county. If someone wants to make it entirely old traditional counties (for example Liverpool in Lancashire), I'm content, although I can't wait to see what they do with Bristol. But the current column has to change because it is inconsistent. (Chorleypie (talk) 22:16, 10 August 2012 (UTC))

The intention is that the County column contains current ceremonial counties where there is no county council. Hence Middlesbrough comes under North Yorkshire as well as the North East region. Strictly speaking the table is a list of official codes for current administrative areas, so no actual need for a county column but it might help casual readers to distinguish Wyre from Wyre Forest etc. I might add a note to make this clearer (as well as restoring the sortable columns which someone removed). So please don't amend the counties unless you find a mistake. Sussexonian (talk) 19:17, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Ta, that's useful, I didn't realise ceremonial counties had a current definition. Sortable columns sound good to me. But this article is "ONS coding system". The ONS definition of North Yorkshire does not include Middlesbrough. So, thinking on, I'm now not content with it having any traditional old counties after all! If the column is present, it must match how ONS uses counties. (Chorleypie (talk) 17:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC))

I have added some footnotes to explain the changes, but on reflection I think perhaps the table should show the post 1974 county in all cases, with the current position in a footnote. But in any case the counties are not really relevant to the coding system in relation to current unitaries. Sussexonian (talk) 14:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks better; but the county column is still fundamentally different to what ONS does. I wouldn't mind showing ceremonial counties if this page was just a list of districts in England; but not under the ONS heading. I still think we have to remove all counties of Unitary Authorities. Scotland and Wales are already like this. Stirling does not say Perth and Cardiff does not say Glamorgan. I'd also be happy with just deleting the column. (Chorleypie (talk) 22:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC))

Rename article

I think this article should be called "GSS Coding of Statistical Geographies". There's not one obvious title at www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/geographic-policy/coding-and-naming-for-statistical-geographies/index.html with Code History Database and Register of Geographic Codes also mentioned. I think the key thing is to get the word Geography in the title somehow, to differentiate it from codes used by ONS for ethnicity, industry, occupations etc. I've never renamed an article though, will all links to this article still work if I just edit the title? (Chorleypie (talk) 11:05, 1 October 2012 (UTC))

Not sure many other people are concerned about this page! Although it is in main article space it's mostly useful because the codes are used by various Wiki templates, and the term ONS codes is still used there. If it needs to be renamed your title seems a good one, but not sure it's worth the effort. Sussexonian (talk) 18:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

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